


The Fey King's Extra Durable Heart

by JacarandaBanyan



Category: Naruto
Genre: Blood and Gore, Bounty Hunter Kakuzu, Canon-Typical Violence, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Style, Fey King Hidan, Hearts, M/M, Mostly blood, clumsy metaphors, excessive descriptions, fey folk, should Jashinism just be a warning?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-04-19 03:01:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14227674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JacarandaBanyan/pseuds/JacarandaBanyan
Summary: The Fey King’s throne loomed over the hall like a church’s gargoyle. It faced the door so that one could not set foot in the room without being subjected to it’s ominous presence. The candles strewn throughout the room provided a flickering, inconstant light, but it was like the room was underwater. The light reached a few feet above eye height before weakly filtering out and dying just as it touched the foot of the stone base of the structure.It was just as empty as the rest of the castle.Kakuzu curled his fist tighter around the iron spike. There was no sign of any Fey Folk anywhere, nor either of the missing Uchihas.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shipcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipcat/gifts).



> This was written (very slowly) in response to a prompt from shipcat, who is lovely and you should go read their work. Here is the first chapter, to prove that I am, in fact, making progress.

The Fey King’s throne loomed over the hall like a church’s gargoyle. It faced the door so that one could not set foot in the room without being subjected to it’s ominous presence. The candles strewn throughout the room provided a flickering, inconstant light, but it was like the room was underwater. The light reached a few feet above eye height before weakly filtering out and dying just as it touched the foot of the stone base of the structure. 

It was just as empty as the rest of the castle.

Kakuzu curled his fist tighter around the iron spike. There was no sign of any Fey Folk anywhere, nor either of the missing Uchihas. 

Every tentative step he took echoed like the imposing toll of a clock tower bell on the smooth stone floor.  _ Dum… Dum… Dum…  _ Like he was unknowingly participating in some sort of countdown. After years in the bounty hunting business, things like this set his teeth on edge. It was almost enough to make him suspicious that time did in fact pass in this place. 

He turned back to the double doors he'd thrown open. From this vantage point, he could look out through them, down the the cascading staircase, to the lake and the horizon beyond. His eyes narrowed. The surface of the lake had changed while he wasn't looking. All but the darkest streaks of yellow and orange had faded, leaving only reds, purples and the encroaching blackness. It almost looked bruised and bloodied. 

As he stalked closer to the entrance, taking care to stay away from the treacherous edge, the last few rays of sunset retreated below the horizon, leaving the bloody red clouds over the lake as the only indication that the sun hadn't just poofed out of existence the way the Fey Folk seemed to have done.

Finally even that faded away to darkness. The first star twinkled over to his right, over the gardens he’d wandered through in search of some living soul. They came right up to the stairwell, some of the vines even crawling up the bannister and clinging to the walls. To either side of the stairs, the throne room fell away into a wicked drop.

This was just one building. He should check the others.

_ Dum… Dum… DumDum… DumDum… _

Kakuzu froze. Someone else was there.

He whirled around and peered into the tangle of writhing shadows where the candles ended and the throne room continued. 

A pale figure emerged from the shadow of the throne.

He was wearing a dark black cloak with white fur trimming and a crown made of metallic spikes. His eyes glowed the same purple as the clouds just before the sun died away completely. Slung over his shoulder was a scythe the color of drying blood that swayed like a clock’s pendulum every time he took a step. A pendent hung around his neck; the same triangle inscribed in a circle. It glinted dully in the candlelight.

_ Dum… Dum… Dum…  _

The Fey King strode across the throne room towards Kakuzu. His footsteps grew quicker, and so did the echo. It was almost like his imaginary countdown clock was speeding up too.

His heart matched the increasing pace.

The Fey King smiled and opened his mouth to say something.

Kakuzu lunged.

For a second, the king just gaped at the metal spike that he had plunged through his ribs. Blood began to run pour from the wound like floodwaters down a storm drain. A puddle formed on the floor. He could see the barest glint of bone peeking through the gore. Smoke rose from the punctured skin as the iron burned Fey flesh. 

Then the king began to laugh. 

“Hahahahaha! You’re here to kill me aren’t you!? Oh, that’s  _ perfect _ . You’re gonna have to try harder than that though, whoever the hell you are.”

The King’s laughter was whooping and unhinged, like the shrieking of an excited seagull, but with more malice behind it. Dread welled up like icy water in Kakuzu’s heart. He pushed it down. This was a… setback, but not the end of the mission. 

“I’m Kakuzu the Hunter, and I’m here on behalf of Takishire to investigate several recent incidents. Several people have gone missing, only to turn up dead in the woods. I have reason to believe you Fey Folk are the culprits.” 

The Fey King smirked. “Yeah, I’ve been killing them. Or letting members of my Court do it. It pleases Lord Jashin, you see.” His eyes were crazed, and the blood flow from the wound hadn’t ceased at all. Smoke continued to rise from the iron spike embedded in his chest like a burning stick of incense. Pale, bony fingers stroked the pendent around his neck, leaving a small streak of blood on it. He began to walk towards Kakuzu again. 

“If iron doesn’t kill you as the stories say, I’ll simply find another way.” He fell back into a fighting stance. 

The Fey King howled with laughter. “I think I like you already!” His eyes snapped up to meet Kakuzu’s. The mania there didn’t lessen, but the direction of it seemed to change. “It’s not every day a mortal shows up here, prepared to do battle with the King.” 

Kakuzu ignored his words in favor of gaging the shrinking distance between them. 

“Three bodies still have not been found. Where are Itachi, Sasuke, and Shisui Uchiha? Or have you killed them as well?” It would be a pity if he had. The Uchihas were quite rich, and would love to reclaim their dear sons, especially after the recent string of drownings. 

Instead of answering, the king lunged. His scythe arced through the air like a pouncing cat. Kakuzu dodged, and the weapon’s claws dug into the floor where his feet had been seconds before. Kakuzu took advantage of the moment and slammed his fist into the king’s throat. While he coughed, trying to recover his breath, Kakuzu slipped a silver dagger from the inside of his sleeve and slammed it into his stomach. He made sure to really  _ rip _ it out so that the tip slashed raggedly though anything that was both important and squishy.

The king took it with a smile like a curved blade. The candles flickered, and the echoing sounds of their footfalls made the air vibrate. For the briefest moment, Kakuzu was reminded of the way hot, heavy summer nights vibrated with the calls of insects. 

“You’ll have to do better than that, you mortal fucker. It takes more than guts to kill one of the Fey Folk.” The shadows on the king’s face flickered back and forth, making him look more demonic than Fey. “And thanks to Lord Jashin, killing me is even harder.”

Kakuzu did not back down, even as the blood poured from the gash down his opponent’s chest like a waterfall, ending in a pool at their feet. He pressed forward again, slashing at the king’s throat this time. Some part of him, the part that suspected no amount of blood loss would secure him a victory, muttered that even if this didn’t finish the fight it would at least shut his opponent up. 

His feet splashed the pool of blood as he moved.

An arm as pale as bone caught the edge of his dagger just before it reached his throat for an instant before skeletal fingers closed around his wrist. 

“So you want to know about the Uchihas, huh?”

The king’s laughter bounced off the walls, leaping higher and higher, like climbing flames. Kakuzu almost wanted to shield his face from the intensity. 

“You want to rescue the Uchiha boys, huh, Hunter-fucker? Is that what this is? Want to rescue them and return to your pathetic village a hero?”

Kakuzu twisted his arm free of the other’s grip. “I couldn’t care less about that. The Uchihas are rich, and they’d be willing to pay any price to get their precious heirs back.”

This answer seemed to please the king. He stepped back and released his grip on Kakuzu’s dagger so he could run bloody fingers reverently over that pendant. 

“Jashin has blessed me!” He whooped. 

Perhaps, Kakuzu thought, he should be paying more attention to that thing. If he could get his hands on it, could he trade it back to the king for the Uchiha boys? Either way, the King had left himself open, and Kakuzu wasn’t going to let that opening pass. 

He lunged again and grabbed the iron spike where it still protruded from the King’s heart and used it to swing the king around onto the edge of the staircase. With a final heave, he sent the king toppling over the side. For three tense beats of his heart, the King’s mad cackling about this ‘Jashin’ continued on. On the fourth beat, it cut off abruptly.

Kakuzu cautiously untensed his shoulders. Immune to blood loss or not, that fall would leave the King in bad shape. He wouldn’t be counter-attacking any time soon. He could return to his mission.

The King had not said that the Uchihas were dead. He hadn’t said they were alive, either, exactly, but he hadn’t said they were dead. So it stood to reason that they must be around here somewhere. Unfortunately, the King was the only living being he’d seen since entering the Fey realm. Wherever they were, it would probably take him a while to find them. 

He took one last look at the shadowed throne room, then set off down the steps.

...

The gardens made Kakuzu feel paranoid. He couldn’t quite figure out why or how, but they were  _ off _ in some profound way. The leaves didn’t hang quite how they should. The light from the full moon didn’t hit the flowers quite right. The twists and whorls in the ornamental trees didn’t seem quite natural. He kept his hands off the rail as he descended the stairs. He wasn’t afraid of the vines that grew like grasping hands up the bannister, really. He didn’t know enough about them to be afraid. That didn’t mean he would give the sinister plant an opportunity to enlighten him.

It wasn’t until he reached the bottom of the stairs that he realized that it wasn’t moonlight on the flowers- the flowers were starting to glow. Before his eyes the petals and leaves began to light up and bathe the gardens in soft, multi-colored light. Kakuzu narrowed his eyes against the growing glow and growled low in his throat. It would be more difficult to slink through the gardens if they were lit up like a market at night. 

But perhaps this wasn’t a wholy negative development. He knelt down to a wide, star-shaped flower that pulsed with pink light and tapped it lightly. Nothing happened. He tapped it a little harder. It didn’t so much as move. He ran his fingers over it and dug a nail into the edge of one of the petals. Nothing. No matter what he did, the flower didn’t move. It was like it was cast from some impossibly thin metal. Slowly, he pinched the stem just under the flower where it was narrowest, steadily increasing the pressure until a dent formed. With great care, he twisted and bend the stem at that weak point. After several minutes, the stem finally snapped and the flower fell into his palm. It’s light had not dimmed, and neither had that of the rest of the plant. Curious.

He plopped it into his pocket and stood. Perhaps it wouldn’t matter if he found the Uchihas. These glowing flowers were the height of craftsmanship; he could easily sell them for steep prices. Perhaps his time would be better spent trying to gather as many of these as possible.

But no, there were too many unknowns. What if magic powered these flowers, and they crumbled to dust as soon as he left this place? What if they did more than just light up? No, his first priority should be to find the Uchihas and get out of this place. 

An odd shadow caught his eye and he whirled around. 

The Fey King lay on the ground, impaled through the stomach by several flowers. The pool of blood underneath him reflected the light from the flowers. It made Kakuzu think of the sea near a sprawling, night-lit city. Broken bones jutted from his mangled ribcage like futuristic skyscrapers. 

Kakuzu’s iron spike stuck straight up out of his back pointed at the sky. 

He walked over, warily eyeing the body. It was difficult to tell in the uneven light of the flowers whether the king’s chest was moving or not. Years of hunting assured him that nothing pierced through the chest like that lived. But some deeper instinct slowed his steps. Getting stabbed hadn’t slowed the king down at all up in the throne room. 

There was some sort of lump on the end of the spike. It looked like it was about the size of his fist. It twitched. Then twitched again. He froze. 

It was such a small movement, small enough to have been imagined. Like when you look at something stationary too long and your brain starts trying to convince you it moved a little bit. Besides, the light was irregular and cast strange shadows. But still he held back. His eyes never once left the king’s bloody, broken back. Sure enough, the lump was pulsing regularly. Perhaps he’d pierced one of the king’s organs? He  _ had _ aimed for the heart, after all. 

The king’s heart had to be worth something. It was probably magical, or at the very least would make some sort of bargaining chip. Yes, this was an opportunity. If the king lived, it was the perfect leverage. If he really was dead, he would find some other use for it. With a sudden movement he seized the king’s heart and yanked it off the spike.

The king’s eyes snapped open. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hidan takes Kakuzu to see the Uchihas.

_ The king’s heart had to be worth something. It was probably magical, or at the very least would make some sort of bargaining chip. Yes, this was an opportunity. If the king lived, it was the perfect leverage. If he really was dead, he would find some other use for it. With a sudden movement he seized the king’s heart and yanked it off the spike. _

_ The king’s eyes snapped open.  _

 

 

Kakuzu leaped backwards and raised a hand in defense, but instead of attacking, the king just groaned and started cursing.  His body squished unpleasantly as he tried to wriggle around the unyielding spike. The puddle of blood began to grow faster. 

“Hey Hunter-fucker!" Kakuzu flinched, hand involuntarily clenching around the bloody organ in his fist. The king did not seem to feel it - or maybe he did, but it was drowned out by the pain of being impaled by an iron spike.  

The king continued. "I need you to spread some of this blood out, alright? Sort of circular-like, with a triangle-ish part inside. It’s okay if you don’t quite get it, it fixes itself.”

Kakuzu stayed right where he was. 

The king’s features scrunched up in annoyance. “Come on, don’t just stand there like a big lump, spread the blood out! Just stick your boot in it and wipe it on the ground.”

“I’m not dipping my boots in your blood. Good equipment is expensive.”

“God dammit you heathen, you wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for Lord Jashin, the least you could do is help me carry out the ritual!"

Kakuzu knew better than to help an enemy carry out anything, let alone a mysterious ‘ritual’ involving blood. He hadn’t been able to kill the king, despite mortally wounding him, and that knowledge made his heart pick up the pace a little. Perhaps this ritual was related to the king’s immortality somehow, and if he left him helpless and unable to complete it for long enough, he’d eventually die.

Waiting for his opponent to eventually die didn’t seem like a very sound strategy. 

The king continued wriggling like a hooked fish around the spike. He didn’t appear to be trying to get off of it, though. He seemed more preoccupied with getting his blood-soaked feet on the ground sole down. He’d curse and squelch his way into his desired position, rub the bloody soles of his feet in the dirt, then start thrashing all over again until his feet were on the ground, but his body was oriented slightly differently. It was slow going, but if the king kept this up, Kakuzu suspected he’d make a full circle of bloody foot smears. 

Why the king wanted a circle, he didn’t know. It wasn’t like anyone was going to be able to see it; the blood from his squirming had made a pool beneath him that was spreading fast and uneven like spilt milk. In several places it had already crossed and obscured the boundary of the circle.

Instinct told him not to let the king finish whatever it was he was doing.

He squeezed the organ in his hand again. This time, he dug his cracked fingernails experimentally into the soft, slippery outer tissue. 

This time the king noticed. His head swiveled awkwardly as he turned to look at Kakuzu. His eyes were glossy and pained the way animals’ eyes sometimes did before whatever was hunting them put them out of their misery. Which was a funny way to describe someone who didn’t look miserable at all.

“Jashin damn it, when did you get your heathen hands on my heart, Hunter-fucker?”

“Do you or do you not know the location of the Uchiha boys?” He squeezed the heart for emphasis. For the first time since he’d gotten here, it seemed like he was finally regaining control of the situation. 

The king looked at his heart in Kakuzu’s hand, then down at the partially completed blood design, then back up at the heart. His eyes tracked a drop of red as it snaked its way down Kakuzu’s forearm and watched it drip down onto the blood-muddy ground. Then, he smiled. It was the look of a man who was anticipating great happiness, but hadn’t quite gotten it yet. 

“I do.”

…

The king abandoned his mysterious ritual, to Kakuzu’s relief, and after squirming off of the spike he set off down the garden path toward what he described as an enormous outdoor ballroom, chattering about Jashin, humans, and death. He left bloody footprints behind him like a trail of rose petals. Kakuzu slipped his heart into his pocket and followed him.

The king didn’t talk so much as demonstrate all the different tones he could use and volumes he could make sounds at. Kakuzu had listened intently at first, but quickly realized that it was mostly about how his interpretation of his Fey religion demanded he slaughter people. Instead he watched the king’s bloody hands contort and wave about like they belonged to an over enthusiastic conductor and remained vigilant.

He wondered idly if he was being lead to the Uchihas, or just their dead bodies.

“I’ve been saying for  _ years _ that we ought to do something about you mortals. Whiny, disrespectful fuckers who don’t recognize the power of Jashin, the power of blood and sacrifice and strength. Fucking polluting Jashin’s perfect, bloodthirsty world. Have the  _ gall _ to  _ tame  _ it, so you can sit on your hands and moralize and talk out your ass. Fucking disgusting.” His voice flowed like tumbling stones. He spoke quickly, but the precise speed of his words fluctuated wildly, and his sentences pulled up in odd places when he unexpectedly emphasized a word. Kakuzu reached slowly for the silver dagger hidden in his shirt, only to remember he’d already used it in their first fight. He clenched the hand in his pocket instead and gripped the bloody heart stowed there.

The king stroked his pendant reverently. It was caked in blood at this point, but the king didn’t seem to notice. It was a shame this king had so many screws loose. Kakuzu might have otherwise appreciated a companion with so few scruples. 

The king was delighted to have an audience, though, if all the almost-happy looks he sent Kakuzu were anything to go by.

“But the old Queen, she wouldn’t listen. She read Jashin’s Holy Laws and believed we should admire humans for their accomplishments. What accomplishments? All they’ve done is depersonalize pain. Sanitize it.  _ Tame _ it. Well fuck that! So of course I had to take her down, for the glory of Jashin.”

Ah. Was that why no one was here? Had this mad king killed the rest of the Fey Folk?

“Once I killed the Queen and destroyed her court, I sent my loyal supporters to hunt down humans worthy of sacrifice and spilled their blood in Jashin’s name!”

Hmm, guess not. Unless he’d turned around and killed those ‘loyal supporters’ since the most recent disappearance, there must still be some people around here somewhere.

The king had a lot of reasons why humankind were in violation of his religion, ranging from the familiar phrases Kakuzu had heard from saner men to the ridiculous and outlandish. Or maybe it was that humans were just an abomination unto his god? It was difficult to parse the finer theological points from his ravings. Much of what he said contradicted itself; at one point, he lectured Kakuzu loudly and angrily on pollution and how everything physically wrong with the Fey realm was humanity’s fault, but later he laughed as he explained why death and destruction were the only path to divinity.

His words became like the chirping of birds, and faded into the background. Instead of paying attention to the king, he surveyed the garden. The plants they passed continued to glow softly in the darkness. They added a level of surrealism to the king’s passionate preaching. Red poppies reflected off his eyes, making them appear bloodshot and dangerous, while luminescent green leaves made his skin look sicker and washed out. Like he was a dead man whose corpse continued on even after his soul had long departed. 

Some of the trees tugged on the corners of his gaze, making him turn to look at them again only to see that the screaming, contorted face he could have sworn he saw peeking out of the shadows was merely a creepy swirl of bark. He thought the branches of some of those trees may have moved, like the desperate, grasping hands of someone beseeching him for help, but they never moved obviously enough for him not to doubt what he’d seen.

He felt eyes on his back, but everytime he turned around the garden was empty. He ran one short, blunt nail over the right ventricle and pointedly didn’t shiver.

Wariness warred with greed. The Fey king had already proven to be difficult if not impossible to kill, and the knowledge hung like a millstone around his neck. He didn’t like knowing that he couldn’t simply put his adversary in the ground if this mission went south. On the other hand, the Uchihas could be within his grasp, and even if they weren’t, the plants in this garden would sell for a fortune.

He wasn’t sure how to categorize the king’s heart.

Their winding, uneven path crossed beneath a drooping, wizened old tree whose branches grew downward and out from the highest point of the tree like a long skirt puffed slightly up and away from the trunk. The bark reminded Kakuzu of dense scar tissue. It too seemed to have a face, if he squinted and looked at it from the right angle. 

As they passed beneath it, a trailing branch caught on his shoulder.  _ After _ the two of them had passed it.

He whipped around. The sudden motion briefly highlighted the twisted face hidden in the tree trunk before it sank back into normal-looking bark again. The branch remained hooked around his shoulder like a parent’s half-hug, the sort used to squeeze messages into their children’s arms in front of company. 

He slapped it off of him and stumble-jogged his way out of the tree’s range.

The king laughed his hyena laugh. 

“You should see your dumb face, Hunter-fucker. Don’t worry, they can move around a little bit, but not enough to really do anything. I told you, I called upon Jashin in my hour of righteousness, and he destroyed the old Queen’s court so they could never rise up again.”

Kakuzu’s finger slipped off of the heart for the first time since he’d threatened the king and sought instead the metallic flower he’d pinched off, and unease settled heavily between his ribs. 

When the king wasn’t looking, he pulled the flower out of his pocket and held it up to his eye. Inside, an insect-sized human silhouette fluttered around like a butterfly in a jar.

...

Hundreds of Fey Folk were already dancing and laughing by the time they reached the ballroom. Several important looking figures detached themselves from the festivities to approach them. 

“Another human, hmm?” Asked a blonde fairy with three smiles. The smile on his face was mischievous, but the smiles on his palms were  _ hungry _ in a way Kakuzu didn't like. 

“Honestly, I don’t fucking know. He came here of his own accord, and he was armed! He’s a pretty tight lipped fucker, but you should see him fight!” He shot Kakuzu another strange, almost-happy look. “He's looking for the Uchihas. Do you know where Kisame is?”

“By the waterfall, hmm.”

Hidan pulled Kakuzu further into the ballroom, trailing blood all over the polished floor. No one seemed to mind. Some of the dancers passed behind them and stepped in it, and the blood that stuck to their party shoes left red splotches on the floor in their wake. Kakuzu wondered if he could trace the red spots later and learn the dance steps from them.

The way the reveling Fey Folk’s eyes lingered on him was just shy of predatory. Glass smiles and swishing, flower petal skirts distracted him and blocked the way towards the waterfall until at the last moment the dancers twirled out of their King’s way, allowing them to continue cutting directly across the room. 

At last they broke free of the dancers and came to an open space near an ornate fountain. Despite the fact that it appeared to be bottomless, several figures sat on its edge and spoke to each other in carefree tones. One of the figures turned to see why all of the dancers had moved away, and Kakuzu found himself face to face with Shisui Uchiha. 

For a missing person, he sure didn’t look all that distressed or in need of rescuing.

After a couple of heartbeats of staring wide-eyed at Kakuzu, Shisui turned and tapped the shoulder of a short young man with a crow on his shoulder, seated on the lap of a much larger, blue-skinned Fey man. The crow boy turned gracefully, perfect hair falling elegantly around his moon-pale cheeks, like a heavy, swishing curtain. His face was already composed into a perfect projection of attentiveness and curiosity that somehow didn’t involve the active use of any of his facial muscles. He had the face of a boy who only smiles when there’s nothing to smile about. Kakuzu could imagine a sad smile on that face, or a smile of despair, but true levity? That was a thing for those less poised than this youth. 

Kakuzu smirked to himself. This was the sort of kid aristocratic parents paid through the nose to have returned to them. 

“Yes, Shisui? Did something-” Itachi asked only to cut himself off when his eyes landed on Kakuzu. 

“I see.”


	3. Chapter 3

Kakuzu would have smiled, had his facial muscles been more comfortable with the motion.

“Itachi and Shisui Uchiha. It’s fortunate that I’ve found you alive and in one piece. You’re family will be pleased to know you haven’t met the same fate as some of the others who have disappeared. Can I say the same for little Sasuke?” He didn’t see the smaller boy anywhere, which could prove a problem. If the child was too young to dance (if the Fey Folk had any concept of ‘too young’ at all), he’d have to go looking for the kid.

Itachi’s face stayed passive, but his palms twitched minutely when he mentioned Sasuke’s name.

“Shisui,” Itachi said, voice deep and deceptively tranquil as still water, “why don’t you go get some refreshments for our acquaintance, Kakuzu the Hunter? I’m sure he would enjoy a conversation with familiar faces from the village. Have you been here for long, Master Hunter?”

Itachi may be trained to swim in the shark-infested waters of politics and wealth by his family, but Kakuzu was a master hunter and Itachi couldn’t hide from him. There would be no food or conversation if either of them could help it. Unfortunate, that. If he returned with grateful, appreciative children, he could probably have parlayed their return into a higher return on investment. Instead, his presence had frightened the Uchiha heir, and he was going to try and flee like a scared deer. 

No matter. Kakuzu’s hearth at home was decorated almost entirely with high-class antlers.

“No need, Shisui Uchiha. We won’t stay here long enough to enjoy the food. Besides,” he smiled just enough to show the bone white tips of his teeth, “I hear it’s poor form to eat anything the Fey Folk offer you.”

Shisui froze in place. Itachi’s shoulders grew just a bit stiffer, and for the space of a heartbeat he looked like a corpse. Then he took a breath and ruined the comparison. The crow on his shoulder squawked, hopped a little to the side, then took off in a flurry of black feathers. It flew over the heads of the dancers and out the way Kakuzu and the Fey King had come. 

The blue skinned Fey man rose to his feet and positioned himself a step behind Itachi. He loomed ominously over the young man, and smiled wide and pleased and full of teeth.

“Is it now? That’s a shame, seeing as Master Itachi has already shared several lovely meals here. But then again, he is nearly family already, so I’d say those rules don’t apply to him anymore.” His high, wind-through-reeds voice caught on the word ‘family,’ like he was forcing the word around a glass shard in his throat. Kakuzu would have zeroed in on that word anyway, but as it was even the Fey King, silent for once, seemed to have taken notice of the emphasis. 

Itachi nodded and subtly shifted to angle his body into the tall Fey man’s chest, like a cat rubbing up against its human’s legs while a dog barked at it. His gaze fell on the small space between Kakuzu and the King as he finally acknowledged the King’s presence. 

“Your Majesty, King Hidan, forgive me for catching up with a member of my old village before offering you my respects. Are you enjoying the party?”

Hidan stared at Itachi, then at Shisui, who was still frozen in the act of walking away for food, up to Kisame, and back to Kakuzu. Then, he let out the whooping, insane laugh that Kakuzu was quickly coming to associate with him, long and high and loud enough to ring over the deep drums and delicate flute the other Fey Folk were dancing to. He wondered if the king ever reacted with anything but laughter or anger. 

Itachi did not react outwardly to the King’s echoing laugh, nor to the sharp, abrupt way he cut his own laugh off to ask a nonsensical question. 

“How’s your chest healing up, Itachi?”

“Very well, thank you Your Majesty,” Itachi replied. “Master Sasori did an excellent job sewing me back up after the operation. He assures Kisame and I that by the end of the year it will look as though there was never an injury in the first place.”

Hidan smirked at Kakuzu. “Hear that, Hunter-Fucker? Like it wasn’t even there. That’s the power of Jashin.”

Kakuzu narrowed his eyes in distaste. He’d had quite enough of Hidan’s idol on the way here. “I don’t recall Itachi invoking the name of your god.”

“It’s Jashin that heals wounds like that, you dumbass! Jashin is mighty, and his power is the foundation upon which my power rests! To sit upon the throne in this realm is to work Jashin’s will! To fail is to fall, as the old Queen did when I came for her and her Court...”

His tirade continued, but the words dissolved into emphatic buzzing by the time they reached Kakuzu’s incredulous ears. The King’s anger was loud and sudden, but it lacked the depth to truly impress him. He turned his attention inward. 

The memory of the Fey King impaled on the spike, bleeding to death but never dying, even after Kakuzu had removed the organ that was theoretically pumping that blood, suddenly felt more important. What sort of operation had Itachi had? Was it even an operation Kakuzu would have heard of? Could it have something to do with the King’s immortality? He often raved about this Jashin, and he’d been trying to draw a symbol back on that spike in the gardens. Would hunting down Itachi lead to similar death-defying results? Was Itachi banking on something similar to escape Kakuzu?

The warm weight of the heart in his pocket suddenly felt much hotter. 

“What’s this about an operation?”

The blue Fey man chuckled darkly, which sounded eerily like a death rattle in his high, reedy voice. 

“He got the same operation I did. The one you gave my King, if that that thing twitching and leaking blood from your pocket is any indication.”

The Fey King laughed, and Kakuzu’s first thought was to take the heart in his pocket and fling it at him like a hot coal, then take the fountain water and wash his blood from his clothes before the stain became impossible to remove. His second thought was to stay his hand, which had already begun to move to fulfill his first thought. That heart was leverage. Whatever taking it might mean, whatever secondary uses it may have, squeezing it in his fist had moved the King to do as he asked. 

Whatever the situation between Itachi and the blue Fey man, it was not the same as the situation between him and the King.

“Master Kakuzu.” Itachi’s voice cut through the thick fog of his thoughts. “As you have said, our family may find joy in the knowledge of our survival, though I am not so certain as you. Either way, if you wish to convey the news of our decision to stay in this realm to my mother, Mikoto Uchiha, I would be thankful. She will likely know the prudent thing to do, and will be the most level-headed member of the household in her reception of messengers.

“Should she ask after my return, tell her that while short visits may become possible in the future, I will not be returning any time soon.” He locked his perfectly placed, blue-blood eyes with Kakuzu’s own. He no longer even pretended to be dividing his attention between him and the King. “I have given my heart to Kisame, and he has offered me his own in return. I can not leave.”

Behind him, the blue Fey man reached into the pocket of his cloak and pulled out a heart that, just like the one in Kakuzu’s pocket, pulsed in the open air and bled sluggishly. A fine metal ornament in the shape of a circle intersecting the three points of an equilateral triangle was sewn directly onto the heart, and it shone just a little brighter each time the organ pulsed. 

Well, two out of three wasn’t bad.

“And what shall I say of your brother and cousin?”

Itachi’s breath stuttered, and Kakuzu smelled blood.

Shisui was still at the edge of the fountain, unable to slip away but not a part of the conversation. He was just as likely as Itachi to know where to find little Sasuke, and he was older than Itachi besides. Itachi may be an important family member, but Shisui was just as important, if not more so. Perhaps, with the pinched off flower in his pocket and the fairy-thing it contained, he could recoup the loss of Itachi outside the village. There was a market for curiosities as well as for flesh, and if the silhouette he had seen during his earlier inspection was what he thought it was, the flower neatly intersected both markets. 

He stepped towards Shisui, arms extended to take him by the hand. Shisui’s big, surprised deer eyes widened and he twisted his body to flee, but there was a wall of Fey dancers in full, twirling skirts between him and freedom and no matter how fast he might be, there was no escape in that direction. 

Then a blur of black rushed past him, and one beat of the King’s disembodied heart later, Itachi stood at his cousin’s side. One heartbeat after that, his hands laid palms down on Shisui’s back like he was massaging a sore muscle and pushed him hard. Shisui’s stance collapsed under his push, and he tumbled over backwards into the bottomless fountain. 

Itachi followed through on the motion and spun back around to face Kakuzu. His hands were shaking. He glanced over Kakuzu’s shoulder, and nodded to the blue skinned Fey man, who climbed over the lip of the fountain and dove in after the oldest Uchiha. Neither resurfaced. 

Water sloshed over the sides, soaking the dresses of other Fey Folk seated on the edge and spilling onto the floor. It spread over the nearby sections of the dance floor and turned red with the blood still dripping from the King and from the footprints of the dancers who had stepped in it. The dancers backed away from the water and from Itachi, who stood alone now in Kakuzu’s path. 

“Go back to the village, Master Kakuzu, if that is what you wish to do, but do it alone.” A bloody glint passed over his steely eyes. “I would suggest you do so while you still can. The King is not a patient man, and while you may have his heart in your pocket, it would be quite easy for him to take yours by force.”

Kakuzu thought of the strange symbol of the triangle inscribed in a circle and the almost-happy way the king had looked at him on the way through the gardens, and thought that perhaps Itachi was right. The King was laughing again, and though his attention seemed to be on Itachi for the moment, Kakuzu still felt a chill slide down his spine like a cold raindrop. That hyena laugh sounded much more predatory now than it had mere minutes ago. 

Heedless of the dancers and the large expanse of bloodied dance floor, Kakuzu fled. 

He pushed his way through dancers with elegant dresses and inhuman teeth, past strange and tempting food and expensive looking paintings. He fled down stairs and through the gardens, pausing only to snatch thin-stemmed flowers whose prisoners glowed inside. His heart beat fast and hard in his chest, pumping blood so fast past his ears that he couldn’t hear a thing.

When he tried to hear past it, he could sweat he heard the King laughing. 

The King’s bloody footprints marked the path back to the throne room like bread crumbs. Kakuzu was sure the heart in his pocket was leaving a similar trail, but he didn’t care. What did a trail matter when your hunter knew where you were fleeing?

The soles of his feet burned when he finally came to a stop at the fairy circle he had first entered through. Careful not to crush even one tiny mushroom, he stepped into the circle and left the Fey realm with the King’s heart in his hands.

The last thing he saw in the Fey realm was the King’s face as he ran down the path after Kakuzu. Watching his face as he faded back into the human world was like watching a perfect porcelain plate plunge from the top shelf towards the hard stone floor.


	4. Chapter 4

The Uchihas were not pleased with him, and their displeasure curled throughout the village like pungent smoke until Kakuzu could feel the anger that permeated his home like physical phenomenon, a sort of second humidity. Everywhere he went, whispers followed him. They wondered in low voices somehow just loud enough for him to hear what the Uchihas would do to him, now that he had failed to return with their precious children. They derided his hunting skills, and called him a liar on top of it for his story of the Fey realm. The Fey King’s heart convinced no one; it could easily be a pig’s heart, they said. That was no proof. The glowing flower with the little fairy inside was slightly better, but angry Uchiha cousins denounced it as merely a well-crafted bauble, not evidence of Fey Folk enticing their children away to some other realm. After both the heart and the flower failed, he tried to take the Uchihas with him back to the Fairy Ring that had lead him there, but none of them would follow him into the woods. 

He had failed.

Mikoto Uchiha had received Itachi's message with skepticism and suspicion, but ultimately with a wary sort of acceptance. Her husband, on the other hand, had flown into a rage. Fugaku Uchiha called for Kakuzu to be imprisoned for his failure, for a pound of flesh and blood to be extracted from his body, for some symbol of his failure to be inked into his skin so no one would ever be able to forget it, for every terrible punishment he could think of and some Kakuzu believed he was making up. 

He was not the only one. Other Uchihas hissed insults and accusations at him in the streets, and the talk of punishment didn't fade away. 

Soon, village gathering places were closed to him. Anyone who didn't shun him for his failure avoided him in order to escape any accusation of sympathizing with him. No one else wanted the Uchiha’s wrath to fall on them as well. He could not sell the meat he hunted at the market, no matter how choice the cut or how neatly-slain the animal. Even the glowing flower with its living prisoner did him no good, for no one had been interested in such a pretty but useless thing, and in the end he’d had to sell it to a traveling merchant in order to afford the bread at the village market.

He could hunt and forage for most of his food, and he was frugal enough with his money that his expenses were small, but even so he fell into poverty. He could not make money off his skills as a hunter in his own village, and the Uchihas had poisoned his good reputation enough that no one else would hire him either. Without any source of income, he couldn’t pay for the materials to fix his clothes or his house, or for medical care, and when he did have money in went to buying what food he couldn’t hunt or gather himself.

He tried to take bounties on missing persons or criminals from outside the village, but news of such jobs only reached the village through travelers, and often the person in question had already been found. 

Still, he was used to being frugal, and had never been the most social member of the village, and was able to make due. He carried on in defiance of the Uchihas, and shoved away the doubts that crept up on him like venomous spiders.

The Fey King’s heart whispered to him sometimes. Not all the time. Certainly never when anyone else was in the room with him. It often remained silent when things were looking up a little, like after he’d successfully gotten a bounty for an out-of-towner who didn’t know of Kakuzu’s failure. But then the whispers would be particularly loud one day, and he would return home and hear echos of the Fey King’s laughter coming from his pocket, or crazed prayers to Jashin. Once, when Kakuzu heard the heart whispering and put it near his ear to better make out the words, he heard the King’s voice loud and clear: “I’ll find you, Hunter-Fucker. You can’t escape that easily.”

He put it back in his pocket, and didn’t take it out again, no matter how loudly it whispered to him.

Then, one day, a few months after his failure to return the Uchiha children, a law keeper showed up to escort him to prison, and Kakuzu realized all at once that Fugaku Uchiha had merely been biding his time while he appealed to a county court through one of the many Uchiha cousins. Unbeknownst to him, they had accused him of stealing and murdering Itachi, Shisui, and Sasuke, and he of course had not shown up to make his own case.

And so he was taken down into the village jail, which was run by Fugaku’s relatives, and after Fugaku carried out every last one of his threats, he was left to rot.

...

He thought must be mad now, in both senses of the word. He was angry at everything- the village, the Uchihas, Itachi, the Fey King, the world- and his anger had to stretch in every which direction to accommodate all of his hatred and betrayal. 

The chains rubbed hard and unpleasant against his arms, but he couldn’t bring himself to do anything about it. He rather hoped the cuffs would scar him. Maybe that would be enough to obscure the black bands that encircled his wrists. 

How dare Fugaku mark him a criminal? He failed to retrieve wayward children! He didn’t kill anyone, or commit some sort of heinous act! He was still a skilled hunter, a careful man, and a member of the village! If he was a criminal, then the entire village was full of criminals, and he shouldn’t be alone in this tiny, cold cell, listening to the sound of his own heartbeat and that of the Fey King’s heart reverberate in his head like pounded drums. 

He kept himself from clawing at the marks, as well as the stitches that held the most debilitating of the wounds from his punishments together, but mostly by clawing instead at his hair, which grew long and wild in the cell without someone to take a knife to it. 

The heart continued to whisper to him, and he thought perhaps it’s voice was getting louder. “Where are you Hunter-Fucker?” it asked him. “Where did you disappear to, huh? Hidan’ll find you, no matter where you hide! I am a part of him, and he will always know where I am.”

When the whispers proved too annoying, he squeezed the heart in his fist in an attempt to strangle it. It didn’t work.

…

He began to hallucinate, and it became difficult to tell what was real and what existed only in his own mind. Sometimes different Uchiha family members came down the stairs to his cell to punish him some more, to ask him about the Fey realm, or to tell him that he had been pardoned. Sometimes he heard Itachi’s voice telling him over and over again that he couldn’t leave. Sometimes he opened his eyes and saw that his cell had become a vast ballroom filled with Fey dancers and haunting music. Sometimes he was convinced he felt the threads that had stitched his skin together came alive and undid themselves, allowing him to bleed out, only there was no blood left in his body, just more threads. 

When he thought about those things later, he realized that they were merely visions, but in the moment it was difficult for him to tell. There was no one he could measure his own reactions against, no other person to tell him that they couldn’t see what he saw or hear what he heard. The cell was empty, so there was nothing he could use to test if his hallucinations were real or not. All he had for company was the Fey King’s extra durable heart, which only worsened his mental state by whispering to him that its owner would find him. 

After the first few days of hallucinations, he came to the conclusion that none of it was real, and no matter what he may think he saw, the reality was that he was alone in an empty cell in the basement of an empty prison. 

So when the Fey King appeared one night in his cell, skin painted in a strange skeletal pattern and weilding a blood-red scythe, he knew he was alone. When the King laughed and whooped and offered prayers to his ridiculous Jashin for allowing him to find Kakuzu, he knew the cell was silent save his own breathing. When the King turned the scythe first on his chains then on the bars of his cell, he almost laughed at his own brain for trying to convince him that he was free when he was certainly still shackled in place. 

The Fey King tried to convince him to stand up, but he knew better than to try. He was still in chains and if he stood up and tried to walk away, those chains would yank him back into place. No matter how frantically the King gestured or shook him by his shoulders or how prayed to his God, he kept his calm and didn’t react.

When he wouldn’t move, the King hauled him to his feet and pulled him up the stairs, past the artfully slain bodies that should have stopped them, and out into the sunlight, down the road and into the woods. Kakuzu, who had been trying to keep track of his hallucinations, added a new mental column for spacial hallucinations and added this little trip out into the real world as the first entry. He stayed patient, still, and silent as a stone until at last the vision ended and the Fey King was gone. And after listening to the King entreat him, curse him, slap him, whine at him and threaten him, his patience was rewarded.

However, the spacial hallucination didn’t fade with the King. No matter how long he waited, he was still free of his chains, sitting in the forest. He fell into a light sleep, and when he awoke, he was still there, in the woods. 

Eventually, after the night’s chill had seeped into his bones and all of his senses had been telling him he was free for hours now, he blinked and considered the wild idea that perhaps they were telling the truth. Could he be free? 

He stumbled to his feet on weak legs and prowled back towards the village as best he could. His house was near the woods, a little apart from the other houses, and he would find meat and water there. It had remained empty in his absence, and was cold and dusty inside when he opened the door and hobbled in, but it was familiar and comforting enough to make up for the way the broken chains around his ankles creaked and drug on the ground. Whenever he next felt the sun on his face, be it through the bars of his cell or through the window of his house, he would have eaten, drunk, and slept, and would be better prepared to consider the possibility that he was free. 

…

He woke up the next day with his rage in full roaring force. Before the sun set again, he drenched himself in the blood of the village. Only once the whispers had been strangled into silence and the Uchiha compound was dark and empty did he return to his bed, eat a little more preserved meat, and lay back down to sleep.

...

The Fey King’s heart pulsed with ever increasing strength as he walked down the forest path once again towards the Fey realm. It squished under his fingers like the wet grass and mud of the path under his feet when he irregularly thrust his hand into his pocket to check that it was still there. Its vitality mocked him, and if it wasn't the only bargaining chip he had left he would have speared it on his knife, or tossed into the forest to be pecked to nothing by bloodthirsty birds. 

Hunger and thirst scratched at his throat like twin claws, but it was the sharp needle of maturing anger in his stomach that truly urged him on. The blood from yesterday had nurtured it, and it was still dried on his skin and in his hair and under his fingernails, but it wasn’t enough. Mere carnage wasn’t enough to slow the beat of his heart down to true, physical tranquility.

He was going to find the Fey King once again.

He could see now why the word ‘mad’ meant both anger and insanity. In the few moments when the red cloud of his anger lifted enough for him to think clearly, he wondered if he was merely upset, or if his tumultuous emotions had passed over some fuzzy line into the sort of madness that ended in an asylum. Then his anger descended again, and on he continued towards the Fairy Ring.

When he finally laid eyes on it again, he stomped into the center and all but heaved himself into the Fey Realm. Once he was back again, he stormed down the delicate garden paths, leaving bloody footprints in his wake. He dug his nails into the heart in his pocket and bared his teeth at anything that might be lurking in the garden.

The King was waiting for him in the throne room, just as before. His smile was less certain, but much the same. He opened his mouth to speak, but Kakuzu tore right through whatever he was going to say and threw the Fey King’s heart at his feet.

“Take this god damned thing back,” he growled at the King. “All of this started with this place, and I want nothing more to do with it. Consider my hands washed of you.”

The King didn’t reach for the heart where it beat on the floor. 

“It’s not mine anymore, Hunter-fucker.” He said it condescendingly, like Kakuzu was some sort of child. “You can’t give it back to me, and I won’t take it back.”

He reached out and ran his fingers reverently over Kakuzu’s stitched up skin. “Besides, how eager are you really to cast me aside? You never threw away my heart all those Jashin-damned months you were away, did you? You traded away the flower you stole from my shitty garden, but not my fucking heart. And yet you think you’re going to walk away from it now? Like hell! If you were going to walk away from it, you’d have left it in the village when you walked away from  _ it!” _

The King’s words echoed throughout the throne room. His accusation broke against Kakuzu’s ears like crashing waves over and over and over again until at last there was silence again.

“Why don’t you stay here instead, like Itachi?” the King suggested in a softer voice. “Your heart doesn’t belong to me yet, but it will in time. And isn’t that what love is? Hearts given and received?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

The King laughed. “Yeah, you wouldn’t, would you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and Comments are always appreciated!


End file.
